Original Research Attendance for injury at accident and emergency departments in London: a cross-sectional study Konrad Jamrozik a , Edgar Samarasundera b, *, Rebekah Miracle c , Mitch Blair d , Dinesh Sethi e , Sonia Saxena b , Simon Bowen f a School of Population Health, University of Queensland, Herston Road, Herston, Queensland 4006, Australia b Department of Primary Care and Social Medicine, Imperial College London, Reynolds Building, St Dunstan’s Road, London W6 8RP, UK c Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31-34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, UK d Department of Paediatrics, River Island Paediatric and Child Health Academic Centre, Imperial College London, Northwick Park Hospital, Watford Road, Harrow HA1 3UJ, UK e Health Policy Unit, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London WC1E 7HT, UK f Brent Teaching Primary Care Trust, 116 Chaplin Road, Wembley HA0 4UZ, UK Received 20 March 2007; received in revised form 28 September 2007; accepted 26 October 2007 Available online 4 March 2008 KEYWORDS Epidemiology; Injury; Emergency departments; Surveillance Summary Objective: In order to set the foundation for the possible development of injury surveillance initiatives in north-west London, data on all presentations during 2002 at the nine accident and emergency departments (AEDs) in the relevant strategic health authority were examined. Study design: Descriptive, cross-sectional study. Methods: A search algorithm was devised to extract records pertaining to injury presentations. The results were validated against a manually checked sample. Descriptive, quantitative analyses were performed. Results: Only four of the nine hospitals in the study area routinely recorded data in a form useful for research on injury. In these four hospitals, presentations with injury accounted for 29.7% of total attendances at the AED, which is markedly lower than the national average. Conclusions: Certain characteristics of London regarding provision of primary care may explain why attendances for injury are proportionately low. However, the unusual pattern also underlines the importance of improving the quality of AED *Corresponding author. Tel.: þ44 (0) 20 7594 0838; fax þ44 (0) 20 7594 0854. E-mail address: e.samarasundera@imperial.ac.uk (E. Samarasundera). 0033-3506/$ - see front matter ª 2007 The Royal Institute of Public Health. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.puhe.2007.10.011 Public Health (2008) 122, 838e844 www.elsevierhealth.com/journals/pubh